Muslim consciences fast asleep

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cordoba28mar28,0,3223127.story?coll=la-home-world

I can feel the food curdling in my stomach, and my teeth starting to grind. Yes, it must be a story about poor ickle Muslims.

"The scuffle over La Mezquita is echoed throughout Spain these days as members of each faith tests the other's tolerance in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country with a fast-growing Muslim minority. Tensions were further inflamed when Islamic militants blew up commuter trains in Madrid three years ago, killing nearly 200 people.The dispute has special resonance in Cordoba, an Andalusian crossroads that beginning more than a millennium ago was the capital of Moorish Spain and one of the Western world's greatest centers of intellectual and artistic culture. Some of today's Muslims may long for Islam's glorious past, but Mansur Escudero insists he just wants a place to pray. "We could be an example for the world," he said, "awakening the consciences of both Christians and Muslims and showing it's possible to put aside past conflicts."

My capital city is veritably bristling with Mosques, many of them preaching jihad in stage whispers. Every time somebody in Britain says something Muslims don't like, gangs of them show up in London's streets wearing suicide bomber vests and carrying placards saying they are going to start beheading people. Many 'mainstream' Muslims will go on the record saying that their intention is to turn Britain into a Muslim country. Our consciences are wide awake!

You are talking to the wrong people, Mr Escudero. Who is it that can't 'put aside past conflicts'? Many Muslims talk about Spain as Al-Andalus, as if the reconquest of Spain never happened, and wishing for the day when Muslim empire building can re-commence. The comical incongruousness of this mans requests to be allowed to turn a Catholic cathedral back into a Mosque when all over the Muslim world Christians and members of other religions are murdered and beheaded on a regular basis (see story about female teacher in Nigeria in last weeks news) by Muslims who believe that we are all fair game is painfully unfunny. When you've removed the gargantuan timber from your own eye, we'll consider the teeny tiny speck in ours, OK?